WAR AND PEACE Review of BBC Production 2016

I suppose that 44 years represents a substantial enough period between television adaptations of Tolstoy’s literary masterpiece. These adaptations, which it has now become critically de-rigueur to giggle at, is what the BBC does
best. [1]  However, Jack Pullman’s 1972 adaptation set the bar extremely high, and even after 44 years, it is still available on DVD, casts a very long shadow. Given its length War & Peace lends itself far better to TV adaptation than to film, with the action comfortably moulded into six to nine episodes. Attempts to bring it to the big screen have been abysmal.

At this point, as parliamentarians are obliged to point out, I must declare an interest. I read War and Peace when I was sixteen, and read it whilst watching The Pullman adaptation, thus for me Alan Dobie will always be Andrey Nikolayevich Bolkonsky, Morag Hood, Natasha Rostova and Anthony Hopkins Pierre Bezhuhov. Reading the book was one of the great literary moments of my life. So I come to the new production with a good deal of accumulated preconceptions. In short, I expected to hate it. The pre publicity which, literally, sought to ‘sex up’ Tolstoy’s masterpiece hardly helped. However, I did not hate it and it was a good hours TV. Though whether it is War & Peace as I have loved and understood it is another matter.

Anthony Hopkins as Pierre Bezhuhov
For any adaptation to work there are three characters that you have to get right, they are Pierre, Natasha and Prince Andrey. Unfortunately in this production only Prince Andrey comes close to an effective screen rendition of one of Tolstoy’s primary characters. Paul Dano as Pierre captures the clumsiness and socially ineptitude of the young man  but he is presented as boyish and lightweight. This is to misunderstand Tolstoy’s character who whilst socially inadequate is intellectually vibrant and contains a core of real substance, it is surely this that fuels Andrey’s friendship with him. The dour and aloof Andrey would have nothing to do with the boyish character presented here. Surely Pullman’s technique of allowing the audience to hear Pierre’s inner voice is the best way to convey the depth of the character.
Natasha on the other hand is too old, too fully developed. In the novel she is introduced as a sprightly girl of thirteen, little more than a child. Her vivacity is rooted in sexual ignorance. Thus we wobble unsteadily into a drama already over scented with sexuality, - the incestuous relationship between Helena and her brother Anatole, so gently hinted at in the book that I could not remember it, is here made explicit.

There has been some effective, even inspired, casting with Rebecca Front’s Anna Mikhailovna, and Adrian Edmondson’s papa Rostova truly excellent. However, Jim Broadbent is a little too gentle as the rasping and irascible old Prince Bolkonsky, Broadbent ‘s Prince hardly likely to inspire the terror that the Old Prince generates in the book.
All this said, for I am indeed spoilt having seen what for me will always be the original, the drama here bears just enough resemblance to Tolstoy’s masterpiece to provide substantial and engrossing entertainment. My advice however will always be to read the book.

[1]This is what I call 'click-bait' criticism. Thus '... this compellingly silly Russian saga is just a bit too English." Yeah one of the masterpieces of world literature reduced to the click bait of ‘compellingly silly Russian saga. Step forward Stuart Jeffries and the Guardian.
As for it 'being too English' well presumably the BBC could have hired an all-Russian cast, delivering the dialogue in Russian and of course French in which much of the conversation occurs in the book, but I suspect audience numbers might come down a little. 

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